Humanities & Society

Greater stress and anxiety resulting from economic insecurity may be at least partly to blame for the U.S. death rate that the government announced Dec. 8 has increased for the first time in a decade, says an expert on poverty and inequality at Washington University in St. Louis.

Despite promises made before Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, will be as difficult to outright repeal as it was to pass, says a health economist at Washington University in St. Louis.

On Giving Tuesday, holiday donation campaigns launch into high gear. But how do people decide where to donate their money? They know that they should give to the neediest cases, but new research from Washington University in St. Louis’s Olin Business School shows often, the donation decision comes down to something called a “charity beauty premium.”

Lately it’s been fashionable to say that hunter-gatherers lived better than we do. They had more free time, they followed more natural sleep cycles, and so on. But is our picture of hunter-gatherer society right? A giant earth mound in Louisiana suggests we know less than we think. Washington University anthropologist Tristram R. Kidder explains.

Conservative columnist George Will is encouraging Republicans to have the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act passed through the U.S. Congress and ready for Donald Trump’s signature on his first day in office. While some see the REINS Act as a way for Congress to reassert its power to control the regulatory rulemaking process, an immediate push for its passage could force the first big battle over Democrats’ use of the filibuster and make it more complicated for Republicans to repeal Obamacare, says Steven S. Smith, a congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Striking racial divides in the 2016 election serve as a reminder that racially charged narratives still have a powerful hold on the American mindset. If the left is to compete in future elections, it must learn to tell competing narratives that build coalitions around racial justice, says political scholar Clarissa Hayward.

Donald Trump’s surprising success with Mormon, Catholic and evangelical Christian voters can best be explained by the deep distrust that these groups have for Hillary Clinton, suggests R. Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.

It is our duty as social workers and public health professionals to advocate for the use of science and empirical data to guide future policy initiatives and legislation to improve the well-being of all, said Mary McKay, dean of the Brown School.

Donald Trump’s election has shocked many. But for Adia Harvey Wingfield, professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences, the candidate’s rhetoric has been all too familiar.

Jeffrey McCune, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that Trump voters understood exactly the candidate they were getting.